VI
In Delhi, Gandhi was receiving regular updates from Bengal, these sent by the Quaker Horace Alexander, then working on a relief mission among the victims of the Bengal famine. Alexander had several meetings with the chief minister of the province, H.S. Suhrawardy of the Muslim League, who was thought to have played an extremely partisan role during Direct Action Day. The Quaker, on the other hand, found Suhrawardy (as he wrote to Gandhi) a ‘curiously mixed personality. He can be the most fire-eating and rabid of communalists, and also the best of peace-makers. I believe he would welcome a coalition [with the Congress], with a radical policy of social and economic reform.’21
This was written in early September. A month later, after the reports from Noakhali became more dire, Alexander met Suhrawardy again. This time he took along his senior Quaker colleague Muriel Lester, in whose Kingsley Hall settlement Gandhi had stayed in London back in 1931. They had a long talk with Suhrawardy, and found him now more amenable to talk of peace. ‘My own belief,’ wrote Alexander to Gandhi, ‘is that he has sufficient sense now to realise that the present troubles can do only infinite harm to Bengal until the leaders of the two communities can get together. I know enough of Suhrawardy’s black record, including even things he has done within the past few weeks, to realise something of the feeling of those who are asked to walk into his parlour again. But he may be in a different mood now. For in the end continuance of the present horrors can do nothing but harm to the man who is chief minister.’
Alexander continued:
The situation in Bengal is so desperate that it can only be cured by a heroic remedy. That does not mean ruthless repression. It may mean heroic efforts to turn the enemy into a friend. ‘Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every man’ was the brave word of the first Quaker, George Fox. By every man, I take it he meant literally every man, for in every man, however he may try to hide it, something of God remains. I have seen it very plainly visible in Suhrawardy. I hope you and your colleagues will find it there too. So I hope you will encourage them boldly to join the peace committee. Nothing can be lost by so doing. Much may be gained. Is it worth while to try? Surely it is.22
This letter is in Gandhi’s papers. Although there is no reply in the Collected Works, the fact that he left Delhi for Bengal soon afterwards strongly suggests that these British Quakers spurred him to take on the challenge of bringing peace to Noakhali, and beyond.
Gandhi reached Calcutta on 29 October; the next day, he called on the governor (no longer R.G. Casey, but an unimaginative trade unionist named Frederick Burrows with no previous experience outside England), and the chief minister, H.S. Suhrawardy. Gandhi hoped to push on to Noakhali, but Suhrawardy asked him to wait till the situation stabilized. Meanwhile, Gandhi had also developed a bad cough, and the prominent Calcutta physician and Congressman, Dr B.C. Roy, advised him not to travel till the cough had cleared up. To aid his recovery, he was drinking fresh coconut juice, mixed with hot water and honey.23
In Calcutta, Gandhi was shocked by the physical residues of the communal violence the city had lately witnessed. Thus, ‘as one drove through the deserted streets with garbage heaps, at places banked up nearly two feet high against the pavements, and entire rows of gutted shops and burnt-out houses in the side-streets and by-lanes as far as the eye could reach, one felt overcome with a sinking feeling at the mass madness that can turn man into less than a brute’.24
While he was in Calcutta, Gandhi got news of riots that had lately broken out in Bihar, where, to avenge the killings of their co-religionists in Noakhali, Hindus had gone on the rampage against Muslims. This was the Bengal situation in reverse—Hindus killing Muslims with a Congress (or majority Hindu) government in power, as against Muslims killing Hindus with the League in power. ‘If half of what I hear is true,’ wrote Gandhi to Nehru, ‘it means that Bihar has lost all humanity.’ He asked Nehru to pass on the letter to the Bihar government so that they could take remedial action.25
Gandhi left for eastern Bengal on 6 November. Shortly before he left, he issued a public appeal to the people of Bihar. ‘A bad act of one party,’ he told the Biharis, ‘is no justification for a similar act by the opposing party, more especially when it is rightly proud of its longest and largest political record….And is counter-communalism any answer to the communalism of which Congressmen have accused the Muslim League? Is it Nationalism to seek barbarously to crush the fourteen per cent of the Muslims in Bihar?’
Gandhi said ‘though Bihar calls me, I must not interrupt my programme for Noakhali’. He told the Hindus of Bihar that they were ‘honour bound to regard the minority Muslims as their brethren requiring protection, equal with the vast majority of Hindus. Let not Bihar, which has done so much to raise the prestige of the Congress, be the first to dig its grave.’ If the ‘erring Biharis’ did not turn over a ‘new leaf’, he might even consider going on a fast unto death.26
Gandhi’s first speech in eastern Bengal was in Chandpur, where refugees had demanded that the government post Hindu officers and policemen in the riot-torn districts. Gandhi reminded them that ‘Hindu officers, Hindu police and Hindu military have in the past done all these things—looting, arson, abduction, rape’. In another speech, he spoke wistfully of his trip through eastern Bengal with the Ali Brothers, twenty-five years previously, when Hindus and Muslims lived and laboured together, and fought together, non-violently, under the banner of Khilafat and non-cooperation. He himself remained ‘a servant of both the Hindus and the Mussalmans’.27
While holding out a message of hope, Gandhi was disturbed by what he saw: temples and schools razed to the ground, Hindu homes charred or abandoned, Hindu women missing or abducted, those still with their families too scared to wear the bindi on the forehead or the sindoor in their hair that signified their faith.
Gandhi addressed a meeting every evening. A heartening sign was the large number of Muslims who turned up to hear him speak. A reporter on the spot estimated that 80 per cent of the crowd was from that community. When the time came for namaz, Gandhi cut short his speech so that the faithful could go to the mosque to pray.28
Gandhi had come with several colleagues, among them Pyarelal, Sushila Nayar, Satis Chandra Dasgupta and a spirited Punjabi Muslim follower named Bibi Amtus Salam.
These Gandhians were joined by a band of Sikhs, led by Niranjan Singh Gill and Jiwan Singh, both former officers of the Indian National Army. The sturdy Sikhs helped move luggage from village to village, erected temporary shelters, and repaired and drove motor vehicles. The work of social succour, of consoling the victims and helping them rebuild their lives, was in the hands of the Bengali Gandhians and their ‘Noakhali Rescue, Relief and Rehabilitation Committee’.29
After the first few villages, the attendance at Gandhi’s meetings began to decline. Muslims who had previously come in large numbers now chose to stay away. Perhaps the novelty had worn off, or perhaps his message of peace and reconciliation did not resonate. One Muslim woman told Gandhi that the menfolk would attend his meetings only if the Muslim League leaders instructed them to. Gandhi asked the few Muslims who had come to hear him to take his message to the others.30
After a week touring the countryside, Gandhi decided that rather than be together as a party, each social worker would be based in a different village, and hold herself or himself hostage for the safety and security of the Hindu minority there. These sevaks would observe non-violence, live on a frugal diet, refrain from bathing in tanks used by villagers for drinking water, etc. Satis Chandra Dasgupta defined their work as follows:
Ideal: The ideal should be to bring together the two communities on the basis of fearlessness. The members of both the communities should learn to shed fear of each other and also of the Government. They should learn to respect each others’ religious sentiments….The attainment of freedom in this one matter of religion, may be symbolic of the other freedoms.
>
Work: The Sevak should regard himself as the lowliest servant of the village. He [or she] will rejoice in cleaning night soil, in cleaning tanks, in repairing roads, in keeping public places of worship or education etc in a fit condition. He should strive to attend the sick and be a nurse wherever possible.
He [or she] should be helpful in rehabilitating the villagers and of setting them up in life.31
Gandhi himself decided to settle in a village named Srirampur, which, despite its name, had a Muslim majority. In fact, at this time, only one Hindu family remained, the rest having fled or been killed. Gandhi moved into the house of one of the Hindu families that had fled, this sited in the middle of a courtyard, with a coconut grove and a large tank in the compound.
In Srirampur, Gandhi had two companions. One was the anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose, who had taken leave of absence from his university in Calcutta to serve as Gandhi’s interpreter. Bose also helped Gandhi with his Bengali lessons, reading aloud poems (by Tagore, among others), translating as he went along. Gandhi also practised handwriting; soon he was able to ‘write some Bengali words’.32 The second person with Gandhi in Srirampur was a stenographer from South India named R.P. Parasuram, proficient in typing and in taking dictation.
Gandhi’s separation from them upset the possessive ashramites who had come with him to Noakhali, such as Pyarelal and Sushila Nayar. ‘Bapu, you are going alone,’ a journalist reported them as saying. ‘When will we meet you again?’33
On 20 November, his first day in the village, Gandhi issued a press statement, where he said: ‘I do not propose to leave East Bengal till I am satisfied that mutual trust has been established between the two communities and the two have resumed the even tenor of their life in their villages. Without this there is neither Pakistan nor Hindustan—only slavery awaits India, torn asunder by mutual strife and engrossed in barbarity.’
On the same day, he also wrote a short letter to the inmates of the Sevagram Ashram, saying: ‘I am afraid you must give up all hope of my returning early or returning at all to the Ashram.’
Gandhi had not lived without a core of devoted disciples fussing around him for many years now. In Srirampur, he had to shave and massage himself, peel his own oranges and bananas. After his morning bath, he went around the village, speaking to the local Muslims. In the afternoon, he completed his (self-inflicted) quota of spinning, and then addressed a prayer meeting, on occasion amidst the ruins of a charred house. Some days he ventured out into the countryside, meeting people in other hamlets.
Shortly after moving to Srirampur, Gandhi came down with a stomach upset, probably caused by a bitter local vegetable that he had eaten the previous night. On the 23rd, his tour of neighbouring villages was repeatedly interrupted by visits to paddy fields to relieve himself. He felt exhausted, and Nirmal Bose urged him to return to Srirampur. Gandhi refused, since, as he put it, a meeting had been scheduled in the next village, and ‘a promise should never be broken’.34
Asked how Gandhi was faring without his trusted core of helpers, the stenographer Parasuram said he was managing fine, ‘doing his household duties such as arranging his own bed, books, food and even cleaning his things and utensils’. The one problem was ‘the noise of jackals, who roamed near about Gandhi’s cottage’.35 Parasuram was probably speaking for himself. Neither howling animals nor rattling trains (nor indeed, closed and stuffy prison cells) had ever interfered with Gandhi’s capacity to sleep at night.
Soon the entourage in Srirampur had a new member: Gandhi’s grand-niece Manu. Manu had lost her mother early, and was brought up by Kasturba and Gandhi. After Kasturba died, Gandhi became both father and mother to her. Manu was with them in the Aga Khan Palace, and continued to live with and travel with Gandhi after his release. Now she had joined him in Noakhali. Her exact date of birth is unknown, but at this time, February 1947, Manu was probably in her early twenties. In Srirampur, she helped Gandhi with his bath, and prepared his meals, tasks she was accustomed to doing.36
From Srirampur, Gandhi made short trips to nearby hamlets, returning to home base in the evening. ‘It is my intention,’ he wrote to G.D. Birla on 26 November, ‘to stay on here so long as the Hindus and Muslims do not start living together as sincere friends….At the moment I have forgotten Delhi, Sevagram, Uruli and Panchgani.’
For many years now, Gandhi had observed his weekly day of silence on Monday. This was now changed to Sunday, as that was the day the weekly bazaar was held in this part of eastern Bengal. Gandhi adjusted his schedule to the local rhythms, staying silent on the day when the villagers had to buy or sell their wares, while holding prayer meetings on Monday and through the rest of the week.
While Gandhi was in Srirampur, newspapermen came from time to time to see and speak with him. When, on 2 December, one journalist asked whether, in a future division of India, he would approve of a migration of peoples to create consolidated Hindu and Muslim provinces, Gandhi called the proposal ‘unthinkable and impracticable’. Even here, in Noakhali, his aim was ‘to go on foot, where possible and necessary, from village to village and induce the evacuees to return’. In the village and the country of his conception, ‘everyone is an Indian, be he a Hindu, a Muslim, or of any other faith’.
To get refugees to return was an arduous task. As Gandhi wrote to Suhrawardy on 3 December: ‘In spite of all my efforts exodus continues and very few persons have returned to their villages. They say the guilty parties are still at large…that sporadic cases of murder and arson still continue, that abducted women have not all been returned, that forcibly converted persons have not all returned, that burnt houses are not being rebuilt and generally the atmosphere of goodwill is lacking.’
Suhrawardy, stung by these (implicit, and mostly valid) criticisms of his government, wrote back, suggesting that Gandhi’s place was not in Bengal but in Bihar, where it was the Muslims who were being hounded and persecuted.37
Other Muslim leaders in Bengal were also unhappy with Gandhi’s pilgrimage of peace in Noakhali. In the third week of December, a member of Suhrawardy’s government named Maulvi Hamiduddin Ahmed launched a savage attack on Gandhi. ‘Everyone is aware,’ he remarked, ‘why Gandhiji has become a “Bengali” and an “inhabitant of Noakhali”.’ This League leader claimed that while Hindu propagandists had issued ‘strange and exaggerated reports’, only about a hundred people were killed in Noakhali, and that there was no forcible conversion. On the other hand, in Bihar, ‘the manner in which thousands upon thousands of men and women of a particular community were inhumanly done to death, is without a parallel in the history of the world’. And yet, said this leader sneeringly, ‘Mr. Gandhi does not wish to remain in Bihar.’
‘It was known to everyone,’ continued this critic of Gandhi’s peace mission, ‘that the oppressed community in Noakhali was Hindu and that in Bihar it was Musalman. Would it be wrong for anyone to feel that by riveting the attention of the whole world to Noakhali, Mr Gandhi’s purpose is to draw attention away from Bihar?’38
Gandhi had ignored attacks as fierce (and as unfair) as this, published in Dawn and other League newspapers. But this time, since the accuser was a senior minister in the Bengal government, Gandhi was moved to reply. He had come to Noakhali, he said, merely to ‘make my humble contribution to a lasting and heart peace between the two communities’. He had not come to indict the League or its conduct, but to ask it to ‘shed its complacency and do good solid work for the sake of itself and India’. He then asked his critic to work with him, cooperatively. ‘For I believe that if you and I can produce in Bengal the right atmosphere, the whole of India will follow.’39
Gandhi had now been more than a month in Noakhali. His work had begun bearing modest fruit; a news report in mid-December spoke of how ‘panicky people have picked up courage and many [Hindu] refugees have returned to their homes today in villages of Srirampur and Kamardiya’.40
VII
Havin
g embraced many causes, multiple campaigns, it was Gandhi’s fate to be called away by one cause while seeking to focus his attention on another. This had happened to him all through his time in India. The last months of 1946 were no exception. As he was engaged in bringing Hindus and Muslims together in Bengal, he got an urgent request from a friend in London, asking him to bring Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the Congress together.
After his talks with Vallabhbhai Patel in the autumn of 1946 had failed, Ambedkar turned against the Congress once more. He organized a satyagraha movement against upper-caste oppression, but this fizzled out, as the national mood was now entirely focused on independence. In October 1946, Dr Ambedkar visited London, where he met many politicians and public men, but failed to find support for his views. British MPs knew that the Congress would soon be in power in India, and they didn’t want to unduly encourage a lifelong opponent of that party.
Among the people Ambedkar met in London was Carl Heath, a prominent member of the ‘India Conciliation Group’ of British Quakers. Heath was an admirer of Gandhi who, in 1944, had published a short but entirely sympathetic portrait of him, to combat the ‘widespread misrepresentation and defamation of a noble and prophetic personality’ in the hyper-nationalist British press.41 Now, two years later, he met Ambedkar, whom he found to be ‘very bitter’, this bitterness largely directed at Gandhi and the Congress. Speaking ‘as a personal friend and in a human sense’, Heath asked Gandhi to reach out to Ambedkar. Thus he wrote:
You have done so much for and are always continuing the…struggle over the Harijans. That I know is central and essential to you, and a deeply religious matter. But these people can scarcely be expected to wait quietly for political redress until all those who oppress them are converted. In an awakened India men like Ambedkar brought into the Central Government of India call for certain action now, when all the rest are endeavouring to meet each others’ claims. It should be possible to accomplish a political justice in this matter without breaking the moral and spiritual ties of the community [to] Hinduism.
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